06-24-2021, 03:01 PM
(06-24-2021, 02:39 PM)tomh009 Wrote:(06-24-2021, 02:28 PM)adjlar Wrote: "Steps from The Aud"...for now I hope. I would love to see The Aud eventually move to Downtown Kitchener if possible, similar to what London & Guelph have with their arenas. It really boosts business for local restaurants/pubs downtown on game nights at home during the season.
But, how many nights is that, actually, out of 365?
Stadiums tend to offer a good level of urban renewal, actually, even if they only host games certain nights of a year. There are lots of other things like having a hotel integrated into it, as well as hosting trade shows, art fairs, community events, arts and culture events etc that can utilize the spaces. CityBeautiful has a very introductory video on this, but there is a lot of professional urban research and theory on how a well designed stadium district can be great for cities year round. It depends what you let the stadium be used for, what else is there and how well transit access it. That said, you have to have all the stars in the sky align right to actually pull it off and make it a success.
That said, I don't think we're at the point where we need a stadium downtown. We don't have any significant sport teams based here and it would struggle to attract other uses. Plus, I have no idea where you would actually put it. Land downtown is pretty scarce for a project that would be very large...not to mention how much of a nightmare parking/traffic would be during major events (can't really put much hope in people coming from the suburbs to use the LRT).